


On the Downbeat

by jerseydevious



Category: Batman (Comics)
Genre: Bruce Wayne is a Good Parent, Father-Son Relationship, Gen, Grief/Mourning, kinda futurefic, the weirdest fucking drive thru
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-25
Updated: 2019-12-25
Packaged: 2021-02-17 21:43:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,574
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21950164
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jerseydevious/pseuds/jerseydevious
Summary: Jason has recovered his sanity, and Bruce and Jason have recovered their relationship; but there are some things that are hard to forget.
Relationships: Jason Todd & Bruce Wayne
Comments: 64
Kudos: 621





	On the Downbeat

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Cerusee](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cerusee/gifts).



> MERRY CHRISTMAS CEE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
> 
> Takes place in a nebulous future where Jason is Okay and Bruce and Jason are Okay and Jason is a hard-studying gym rat college dweeb.

The man in the passenger’s seat beside Bruce was almost foreign to him, even though it’d been years of the two of them skirting each other, staking the other out like circling predators—Jason, newly christened Jason Wayne, would always be foreign to him in some way. There would always be a vision of a bouncing little boy with thick curls and round cheeks and freckles like constellations, a cheeky child with a fondness for niche literary jokes superimposed over the man Jason had become. It would never be different. Impossible for it to be different—Jason Todd, the boy he’d been, had carved bloody scars into Bruce’s heart that would never heal. Even now they seeped blood with every  _ tha-thump—tha-thump— _

“I’m sorry,” Jason said. 

Bruce stayed silent while he pulled the car into a long, winding drive-thru line. _ Big Belly urger, _ the sign read, since the capital letter of the last word had blown. The red glinted off of the rainwater pooling on the streets, gathering on the windshield in thick drops. Bruce watched the rhythmic movement of the windshield wipers sweep away the rain.

“You hate this place.”

“I have a piece of wisdom for you,” Bruce said, sliding the car into park. The line was not moving. There was a man three cars ahead of him opening his door, shouting angrily, because the line was not moving. Bruce had no reason to believe it would move anytime soon.

“Just hit me with it,” Jason said. 

“A milkshake is a milkshake,” Bruce said, “no matter where it’s from.”

“Oh, really?”

“You can’t fail at milkshakes, Jay.”

Jason snorted. “You can.”

Bruce waved a hand. “Besides the point.”

Jason looked at him, one brow raised. A curl spiraled over his forehead and Bruce fought the urge to smooth it back. Years ago, he would not have fought the urge. “Seriously. How did you get raised by Alfred and become so useless in a kitchen?”   
  


Alfred had not always been an accomplished cook—directly after the murders of Bruce’s parents, Alfred had known how to do exactly nothing in a kitchen, was useless at it to his core. They ate sandwiches, and then tinned soup, and then sandwiches, until Alfred learned how not to burn the grilled cheese and they had tinned soup and sandwiches. When Bruce was fourteen Alfred had returned home after an outing for errands with a crate of recipe books, and together they practiced them, day in and day out—and at fourteen, Bruce was cracked through in his chest, splintered like shattered beechwood. He was desperate for Alfred’s attention and too afraid to ask, so every time Alfred’s back was turned, he’d do something to sabotage the recipe to make that time—that precious time where they were shoulder-to-shoulder, breathing in the same air—last longer. 

“Force of habit,” Bruce said. 

Alfred had declared him talentless in a kitchen, eventually, and Bruce had lost that time with Alfred anyway. It would be a devastating blow. Alfred would never know anything about it. Bruce would always mimic failure, to hide his decades old moment of weakness.

“I’ll pretend like that made sense,” Jason said. “Are you even going to ask if I’m hurt?”

“The answer is no.”   
  


“Fuck you,” Jason said, without any heat. “How would you know, you weren’t there. For all you know, I got my ass kicked.”

Bruce tapped the steering wheel—three times, even beat. “Because I trained you. Who were they, football players? You were—” _ Robin, _ he didn’t say, couldn’t say. 

Jason stiffened. “Say it,” he said, softly. 

“Robin. My Robin.”

“That wasn’t so bad, was it,” Jason said. “Saying the thing.”

The man who had left his car was now returning to it, still shouting, holding an ugly gesture up at a frustrated-looking worker in a red-and-black uniform. The car, a Nissan Versa, sped around the drive-thru line, tires shrieking on the asphalt. The line pulled forward and Bruce shifted the car out of park to follow. Their Bugatti rolled forward easily.

“Wasn’t so bad,” Bruce said. 

_ Wasn’t so bad _ tasted sour in his mouth. Grief tasted sour in his mouth, even now, even a decade later, even a resurrection later, even the long and complicated story of Jason’s return to their family later. Grieving Jason had hollowed him out, trial by fire; grieving Jason had killed half of him and left the flesh there rotting on the inside, the maggots crawling in, the maggots crawling out. Losing Jason had split Bruce’s world at its scars and the wounds had never healed. It hurt, even now, a dull ache in Bruce’s chest that ached even more on the downbeat of his heart,  _ tha-thump—tha-thump— _

“I don’t want,” Jason began, and stopped, and then swallowed, and then began again, “I don’t want everything I did as Robin to hurt, for both of us. I think we deserve better than that. And we had good times, Bruce. We did. It doesn’t have to be—I’m trying to be more than the end of things. It would help if you got onboard with that. It would help a lot.”   
  


_ Wasn’t so bad _ tasted sour in his mouth. Bruce worked his jaw, trying to rid himself of the flavor, and then said, “We did.”

He didn’t say _ I can do that  _ or even  _ I’ll try. _ He built the words on the back of his tongue but they died at his teeth. Robin’s colors, a bright flash in his arms, spattered with blood, the sharp point of white bone exposed to the air, how the image of it burned through him, left him sallow, left him like the ash at the forest floor before the rain washed it away.

“Now you can ask me about the fight.”

“Tell me about the fight,” Bruce said. 

Jason rubbed his jaw with his hand. “I’m in Biology 101, and this is a big med school, and that’s the course they use to weed out the geeks too weak for med school. Whatever. It’s hard as shit, is what I’m saying, but I took it like a dumbass instead of something nice and easy like Environmental Science. Less than a week til midterm. I’m trying to pay attention.”

“I’m glad you pay attention in class.”

Jason shrugged. “Don’t talk to me about art history. Anyway, this asshole—and he’s a basketball player, by the way, we do basketball—starts talking about Bruce goddamn Wayne.”

Bruce blinked. “You started a fight over Bruce Wayne?”

Jason’s stare was flat and level. “I started a fight over  _ you, _ you dumb shit,” he said.

“Jay,” Bruce said. “My—public relations are not—”   
  


“Shut it, they were talking about—the, the y’know. The picture on the yacht.” 

“There are a lot of pictures of me on yachts.” 

“The one where you’re—I don’t mean to sound weird about this, but the fact is, I couldn’t get away from that picture of you kissing a guy for weeks. It was everywhere. Everywhere I looked, my dad, kissing someone. It was painful.”

Bruce’s grip on the steering wheel was bloodless. “Your—”

“My dad,” Jason said. “I said it.”

“Your dad,” Bruce whispered. 

A hand gripped his shoulder and fisted in his button down, tugged him closer, and Bruce let himself lean across the center console. Jason wrapped an arm around Bruce’s shoulders and squeezed. “It’s always been true. For me.”

Bruce closed his eyes. For a moment the warm weight against him was lighter, smaller—for a moment the voice speaking to him was several octaves higher. How desperately Bruce had wanted to hear the word  _ dad _ from Jason’s mouth, when he’d been a kid, how viciously Bruce had mourned never hearing it, how unworthy he was of it now. 

“No one gets to be a homophobic asshole about you when I can beat their brains in,” Jason said. His voice was a low, thunderous rumble that Bruce felt in his chest. “No one.”

The skin over Bruce’s cheeks felt tight like a drum and too hot to withstand. He pulled away from Jason, settled back into his own seat. “I don’t need your defense.”

Jason raised his hands. “You have it. You’re always going to have it. People don’t stop giving a damn because you asked nicely, you’re just shit outta luck, Bruce. Man, you really are kind of having a weird day.”

“I’m not.”

Jason chuckled. “You’re always having a weird day, around me.”

Bruce shook his head sharply. “I am not.”   
  


“No, no, I get it. I get it, I really do, even though it took me five damn years to get it—it hurts you, it really does, to look at me. That’s that look you always give me. I used to think you just hated me, but no, that vaguely constipated look is sadness, who knew.” Jason’s voice was throatier, more shaky, now. “But maybe I just want you to look at me like you used to, y’know? Maybe that’s a dumb thing to want. But God, I’m so tired of feeling like a fuckin’ ghost.”

“I’m sorry,” Bruce rasped. When was the last time his voice had sounded so broken?

“Don’t fucking be sorry, you sad sack of shit,” Jason said. 

Bruce’s eyes skated over the bumper of the car in front of them. California. “Then what should I be,” he said, lowly. 

“Anything other than a sad sack of shit, maybe.”

“Difficult,” Bruce said.

Jason laughed. “For you? Yeah. Yeah.”

“Speaking of difficult, how are you doing in biology,” Bruce asked. 

Jason made a twirling gesture with his hand. “Oh, you know. Ninety-two. Hoping to bring that up with the midterm.”

“I failed.”

Jason looked at him, his brow arched once more. “You’re gonna have to narrow that down.”   
  


Bruce’s hands dropped from the steering wheel. He folded them in his lap. “Biology, in college. I failed it. I failed every class, actually, and I was on academic suspension before I finally dropped out. I was supposed to be going to med school, like my father.”

Jason’s mouth thinned. “Really would like to be able to lord this over you for the rest of time, but I have a feeling you failed those classes for a reason.”

“How did you put it?” Bruce asked. “I was a, ah, sad sack of shit. I spent most of my time in college drunk. This is all to say, I am so unbelievably proud of you, Jay-lad—you are an impressive young man, and you have worked hard to be that way. I appreciate that.”

Jason swiped at his eyes with his sleeve. “Thanks,” he said.

“I don’t mean,” Bruce said, awkwardly, “I don’t—I don’t mean to… look at you—in that way. I don’t want you to think… that I am not proud of you. I am. I am deeply proud.”

“I sense a ‘but’ coming.”

_ But I look at you and I see the baby that cleaved my heart in two, but I look at you and I don’t know how to change, but I look at you and think of the leaps and bounds you’ve grown over the last five years while I have stood still, but I look at you and think I never left Ethiopia after all. _

“But nothing,” Bruce finished.

Jason scrubbed the back of his neck. “I just—first of all, holy hell, what the fuck’s going on with this drive-thru, is that an actual fistfight happening over there? Second of all, just, I don’t know. I don’t know if what I’m asking you is possible, even. But you do… the most impossible things, all of the time. You’re Batman. Everything about you is impossible. And maybe because I am the one asking, you could do it.”   
  


“Do it,” Bruce repeated. 

“Move on,” Jason said. “Just try. I died. I’m tired of reliving that every time I look at you. I get that this is maybe an unfair request, but goddammit, life’s fucking unfair, sometimes.”

“Move on,” Bruce repeated, again, dully. 

“Maybe that was a bad way of putting it,” Jason said. 

“You want me to move on,” Bruce murmured. “Move on, from the death of my son, of my child, of my  _ world— _ you ask me to simply pack it up and move on.”

Jason winced. “Maybe a crude way of putting it.”

The line moved forward. The fight, which Bruce had not been paying much mind to, had dispersed, and now the drive-thru window was taking orders again. Bruce pulled the car out of park and let it ease into the space left by California in front of them. 

“I’m the only one who gets to ask you that, though,” Jason said. “Because I’m the one who died.”

_ I don’t know how, _ the ache in his chest, heavier on the downbeat, seemed to say. _ I don’t know how to love you and have lost you. I can’t do both.  _ The maggots crawled in, the maggots crawled out; the hollowness that lived in him was back, a numbness that spread through his marrow, straight down to his fingertips. That compound fracture he had found Jason with, the bone like an exposed nerve, bright in the light and dusted with ash—the blood, the blood, the smell of burning hair, the blood.  _ Tha-thump—tha-thump— _

“I don’t know how,” Bruce said, softly, and the fact that he’d said it aloud took his own self by surprise. The shock reverberated in his chest like an earthquake.

Jason smiled at him, just a quick, small tug of the corner of his mouth. “We can figure that one out.”

_ We,  _ and Bruce’s hands tightened on the steering wheel until they were bloodless again. We, and the togetherness that implied, Jason’s arm warm and heavy around his shoulders—how new, that was. Their new bond had been forged in heat and gunsmoke. Jason’s slow reconciliation with the family had been tumultuous, but Bruce had fought for every inch of ground he gained.

At the window, Bruce ordered a strawberry milkshake for Jason and a chocolate milkshake for himself, and then he pulled the car into an empty parking space. They enjoyed the milkshakes—quite delicious, especially for a  _ Big Belly urger— _ in silence, until Jason clapped Bruce on the shoulder and said, “But I definitely kicked their asses.”

Bruce grinned—tiny, but a grin nonetheless. “Naturally. I bet they were terrified.”

“It was something to see. The only reason I’m not expelled is because you yelled at the dean for suggesting it, and you pay for all the scholarship kids.”

Bruce, still smiling, took a sip of his milkshake. “Disgusting wealth has its perks.”

“I think you were right, though,” Jason said. 

Bruce hummed. “You’ll have to narrow that down for me.”

“Can’t fuck up a milkshake,” Jason said.

“That was the only thing I learned in college.”

Jason groaned. “You being a bad student stresses me out.”

“Alfred took a similarly dim view of my antics,” Bruce said. 

They finished their drinks quietly, and then Bruce drove Jason back to his dorm room, and hugged his son goodbye. The curve of Jason Wayne’s brows, the bow of his lips and the slash of his jaw might have all been unfamiliar, but they were features Bruce was slowly getting to know. As Bruce walked back to his car, it was those features, for once, that he found himself longing to see again.

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you guys enjoyed!


End file.
